Gila River Fest gathers crowds, native treasures

The Gila River Festival, which completed its 13th annual run on Sunday, does not stay in one place — it changes and meanders like the waterway it celebrates. In addition to the front-and-center parade and fair in the Big Ditch Park on Saturday, participants spent the weekend at hikes, sites and seminars scattered all over the Gila Valley.

The theme for this year’s festival was “Gather the Gila,” with a focus on the natural food, medicinal and cultural resources available right in Grant County’s backyard. To find those, though, one must strike out for the area’s wilder places.

Many of the festival’s field trips were focused on that theme, including hikes to find wild foods and medicines, birds and the native Gila trout.

At Sunday’s fly fishing trip with guide Jeff Arterburn, from Trout Unlimited, a group of more than a dozen — from children to septuagenarians — met at Lake Roberts for an introductory lesson in how to tie and cast flies. They then packed their tackle and new knowledge for a hike to nearby Sapillo Creek, where two of the youngest anglers landed their first Gila trout. The group’s numbers were too large for everyone to wet their lines, but Arterburn let them in on the secrets of finding and landing this treasured native fish.

Adrian Oglesby, who traveled from Albuquerque with Maxine Paul for the festival, said he appreciated how much Arterburn focused on the kids in the group, letting them have the first crack at the Sapillo pool when they arrived.

“It’s critical to get your river protectors in love with the rivers at this early age,” he said. “That’s where the focus needs to be.”

Oglesby and Paul also went on Friday’s birding trip to the Iron Bridge over the Gila with guide Mike Fugagli. There, Oglesby said he learned a lot about native birds’ history with riparian areas. Paul listed the slew of bird varieties they saw there, from a family of wild turkeys to a tanager catching a bug out of the air just overhead.

Amron Gravett brought her 9-year-old son from Tucson with the intention to attend Archaeology Southwest’s trip to the Gila River Farm site. When they arrived, though, her son — already crazy for fishing — just had to make the fly fishing trip at the same time. Gravett said it was a good call and the highlight of their trip, but that they also enjoyed the fair on Saturday and tasting all the native foods on display there.

While some field trips ventured out to the river’s banks, others stayed closer to home. At The Volunteer Center, folks had several days of seminars and sampling sessions of processing local foods.

Gila Conservation Coalition executive director and event organizer Allyson Siwik said that this year’s theme and the local foods especially were a big hit.

“There was so much enthusiasm for native plants,” she said. “These plants have developed around the conditions found here. These are the plants that are going to do well in this area.

“And people are yearning for information about these plants and how to grow and use them for medicines and foods.”

“Native plants, native peoples” was even the title of Saturday night’s keynote speech from Winona LaDuke, world renowned environmentalist, economist and Native rights advocate. That address drew a crowd of around 400 people.

In general, organizers said this year’s festival was a big draw, breaking even last year’s record of 2,000. Siwik said she guessed around 3,000 attended. Organizers had to allow more people than they planned into most of the field trips and priced events due to overbooking.

“It was a terrific turnout,” she said, “with people coming from all over.”

Siwik said the farthest people she knew of came all the way from North Carolina for the festival, having heard of it from local relatives. She said several folks heard about the festival in High Country News and came down from Colorado. That promotion was the result of dollars the Gila Conservation Coalition received for the festival from Silver City lodgers tax.

All in all, organizers said the 13th annual Gila River Festival accomplished what they wanted it to.

“A lot of people said they were really inspired to protect the Gila River,” said Upper Gila Watershed Alliance President Donna Stevens. “And after all, that’s what this is all about.”

Benjamin Fisher may be reached at ben@scdailypress.com.

(Press Staff Photo by Benjamin Fisher) The embodiment of the Gila River itself wound through Silver City streets during the Monsoon Puppet parade on Saturday, part of the 13th annual Gila River Festival.